Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Quick as a flash, a hand grabbed his left ankle.

  “Not so fast, you,” Smedley said, pushing back his hat, and looking up at Brandon. Desperate, Brandon lifted his right leg, and kicked Smedley sharply in the side. He knew those tae kwon do lessons would come in handy eventually…It was the only useful sport he had ever taken up.

  Immediately, with a roar, Smedley let go, and Brandon ran for it. By the time he got to the nearest platform exit, Smedley was tearing after him, his thin hair blowing about without his hat, which had fallen to the ground.

  Running fast, Brandon saw a short tunnel straight ahead of him, and through it, a train stopped on another platform. He ran toward it, and, with a sudden inspiration, turned right, then sprinted past two carriages, jumping onto the third. Smedley arrived in time to watch the doors close, and the train pull quickly from the station. Brandon blew a kiss to the furious man, then laughed with relief, as he saw him recede into the distance, before disappearing into blackness as the train sped into the tunnel. The few other bleary-eyed passengers in the carriage either stared, or looked away, pretending not to see him.

  Brandon exited the Piccadilly Line subway train he had boarded just two stations after King’s Cross. There, he boarded a train on a different platform, which took him on the Northern Line. He got off at the very next stop, Charing Cross, which was also home to a main railway station, just like Kings Cross. All that hopping around, he hoped, would be enough to put Smedley off the trail for a while. Now, he emerged onto the front forecourt of Charing Cross Railway Station, where a line of black taxis waited for passengers.

  Perhaps, Brandon reckoned, he could lie low for a few hours, then catch a train from Charing Cross or—better—a bus back to Balesworth. There, he could call the kind doctor he had met on the train, reunite with Alex and Hannah, and then…What? He shivered. That “what” was what terrified him.

  Walking between the brick gateposts at the entrance to the station forecourt, Brandon found himself in the Strand, one of the busiest streets in London. Two ambulances and a fire engine flew past him, with bells ringing, headed eastward. Glancing around him in an effort to get his bearings, Brandon suddenly realized he was still wearing the luggage tag that identified him as George Braithwaite. Snatching it from his jacket, he crammed the piece of cardboard into his pocket.

  He had been hungry for hours, and he now scanned the street for a place to eat. But there was no fast food joint in sight, nor even any obvious restaurants at all. Ahead of him, across the Strand, he spotted a grey-haired man of about fifty, in a cloth cap, scarf, and coat, standing over what looked like a cylindrical barbecue grill, with wisps of smoke rising from it, and coals glowing beneath. As Brandon approached, the man scooped some blackened round objects from the top of the grill into a brown paper bag, and handed it to a customer in exchange for coins. “’Ot chestnuts!” the man yelled as his customer walked off. “Get yer ‘ot chestnuts!”

  “How much?” Brandon asked.

  “Haypny a poke,” the man said cheerfully.

  Brandon had no idea what that meant, but he pulled out a large bronze penny, and hoped that would do the trick. The man took his coin, returned a smaller, halfpenny coin, and then, with a scoop, filled a bag full of chestnuts. Brandon suddenly noticed that the right sleeve of the man’s coat was pinned to his chest, and just like the newspaper seller Brandon had seen at King’s Cross, he was wearing medals.

  “Hope you don’t mind my asking, but what are your medals for, sir?”

  The man smiled at him. “All from the Great War, my son. I was at the first battle of the Somme, you know, but then I took a Blighty,” he indicated his empty sleeve with his remaining hand, “and got sent ‘ome. I miss my arm, course, but I’m a lot better off than a lot of my old mates, I’m telling you. Five of ‘em are dead. One of them lost ‘is marbles with shell shock, and he’s still in an ‘ospital up in Scotland. Been there for more than 25 years, he has.”

  Brandon realized with a glow of excitement that he was talking to a veteran of the First World War.

  Brandon carried his bag of chestnuts in one hand, his case in the other, and his gas mask box hung around his shoulders. He wandered for a while in search of a bathroom. Finally, he couldn’t wait, and he had to make do with a doorway in a deserted alley, although judging from the smell, he certainly wasn’t the first.

  He travelled farther in search of a place to rest and eat his chestnuts, and was rewarded for his trouble with a bench in a small, quiet park. It took Brandon four burned fingers to eat his chestnuts, but they were delicious, and he eagerly gobbled them all, even though they made him very thirsty. They reminded him of the nut that Alex had found on the country lane, and he wondered if they were the same thing. Soon, all he had left was a bag full of empty shell fragments, and he looked around for a trash can. There was quite a lot of trash along the ground, but no bin, and Brandon reluctantly concluded that most Londoners simply dropped their litter. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do that, so he shoved the empty bag into his already bulging pocket.

  As he did so, a loud wail exploded all around him, making him jump.

  It was the air raid sirens again. Brandon swallowed hard, and immediately decided that the safest thing was to make his way back to Charing Cross Station. He rushed out of the park, past an ornate stone arch, and found himself on a narrow footpath that seemed to be gated at both ends, making it impossible to return to Villiers Street and Charing Cross Station. His heart racing, he hurtled up a small stone staircase onto Buckingham Street, and ran toward the Strand, only to find his way blocked again.

  But now, sooner than he thought possible, Brandon heard the ominous buzz of planes approaching overhead, and hideously loud booms as the first bombs began to drop. Panicking now, he ducked down a tiny lane, and looking up, saw a small sign that read Of Alley. As he did so, a loud whistling sound approached from overhead. To his horror, Brandon watched as a bomb fell from the sky, like a giant bullet. The closer it got, the more it seemed to be headed directly toward him. He froze in terror, and the last thing he heard was the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life.

  Chapter 7

  Splitting Time

  Lying in bed that morning, Hannah tried hard not to open her eyes. That way she could continue to pretend that she was home. But she couldn’t ignore the unfamiliar feel of the coarse sheet, rough blanket, and thinly padded pink quilt, or the freezing cold, or the peculiar smell of the house she was in, or the virtual silence all around her.

  Finally, sighing, she opened her eyes, and climbed out of bed, wincing as her feet landed on the cold linoleum floor. She opened her suitcase, and, with a grimace, removed a plain navy blue skirt, white blouse, thin sweater, and some comically large underwear. At least, it was comic if you weren’t Hannah, and didn’t actually have to wear it.

  Dressed, but still bleary-eyed, she opened the door and tentatively stepped onto the landing, from where she could hear Alex’s voice downstairs.

  Breakfast, in the dining room, was white toast with margarine and jam, accompanied by scaldingly hot tea poured from a pot into cups and saucers for the adults, and milk for Hannah and Alex. Hannah hated milk, and asked for tea. Mrs. Archer looked at her peculiarly, and tutted, but she took away the milk and brought out a cup and saucer from the buffet.

  Alex began to help himself to a good-sized spoonful of raspberry jam, but Mr. Archer tapped sharply on the table next to his hand, and said, “Go easy, young fellow. That’s got to last us.” He only seemed satisfied when Alex finally reduced his claim on the jam to what looked like a half-teaspoonful. Frustrated, Alex started carefully scraping his tiny allotment of jam across his toast.

  Mr. Archer resumed reading the newspaper, and Mrs. Archer returned to the kitchen for a moment. Hannah, with a devious grin, stuck the spoon into the jam, and dropped a large dollop onto Alex’s toast. He gave it a quick slathering spread, and gulped it down.

  When Mrs. Archer came back, her husband said from b
ehind his newspaper, “Terrible bombing raid that was yesterday.”

  “What’s that, dear?” asked Mrs. Archer, putting down the teapot.

  “The East End got it badly again, but, listen, the swine bombed up West, too. Hit Regent Street and the Strand. You should see the photographs. Look, here… Absolutely shocking. And I reckon we’re not hearing the half of it.”

  He continued to read in silence. Then suddenly he sat up, and examined the newspaper more closely. He tapped his wife’s arm, and pointed out something to her. Mrs. Archer’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “Children,” Mr. Archer said, as casually as he could, “What did you say your friend’s Christian name was?”

  “His what name?” asked Hannah, confused and irritated.

  “His Christian name,” said Mr. Archer loudly, as if Hannah were an idiot. “His first name.”

  The paragraph appeared at the end of the story on the bombings.

  A further unidentified person is believed dead, and it is feared that the victim is a child. In one bomb crater in an alley just off the Strand, a suitcase filled with schoolboy’s clothing and a fragment of a ration book has been found, with only the Christian name “George” to identify the owner.

  The kids looked at each other in horror.

  Brandon opened his eyes. The sun was shining overhead, and he felt oddly peaceful. Above him, he saw the sign for Of Alley swim into view, then come into focus.

  He was not dead. That was something. He ran his hands down his sides, and determined that every limb was intact. He vaguely wondered how long he had been lying there.

  Carefully climbing to his feet, Brandon realized he had somehow lost his suitcase. He was puzzled, but relieved, to see no evidence of a bomb blast. Cautiously, he emerged from Of Alley onto Villiers Street, and made his way toward the front of Charing Cross Station. As he reached the Strand, he glanced across the road, and caught sight of a chestnut seller, but it wasn’t the same man he had met before. Suddenly Brandon halted, and, for the first time, really looked around him.

  He was in the Strand, true. He was standing on the same street where he had been before, and yet he was not. Red, white, and blue British flags hung from windows all down the road. He didn’t recall seeing these before. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed? He spotted two horse-drawn wagons, a horse-drawn bus with an open top and a spiral staircase in back…and the very few cars on the road were different…. The people were different: Women wore large hats and long dresses, men wore suits that were styled differently than anything he had seen before the bomb…. He looked down, and saw with shock that he was dressed differently, too. He was wearing a heavy brown wool jacket, shirt, tie, and knickers that ended at his knees, with long socks below.

  A newspaper seller was standing before the gates to Charing Cross Station.Brandon dashed over, grabbed a paper from the man’s hands, and started to read. German airships, Zeppelins, had dropped bombs on London the day before. Today was September 9, 1915. But that was the last bit of information he registered. As the newspaper seller demanded that he pay for his paper, Brandon dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  Some 25 years in the future, Hannah and Alex were sitting at the Archers’ kitchen table. Mrs. Archer had asked Hannah to peel potatoes. Hannah hacked at them fiercely with a small knife, taking off half the potatoes along with the skins. Mrs. Archer, alarmed by the violence, not to mention the waste of vegetables, brought her peapods to shell instead. She was highly amused when Hannah had to ask her how to do it.

  “That woman,” Hannah spat to Alex, shortly after Mrs. Archer left. She ripped open a peapod, and forced the helpless peas into the white enamel basin.

  Alex looked up in surprise from the book Mrs. Archer had brought him from the library.

  “Who, Mrs. Archer?”

  “No,” said Hannah impatiently, “not her. That Professor, or Miss Tatchell, or whatever she calls herself. She is totally jerking us around.”

  “What makes you think that?” Alex asked without enthusiasm, returning to his book.

  Hannah slit open another peapod and viciously gutted it.

  “She brought us here, right?”

  “She did?”

  Hannah groaned at how slow her brother could be sometimes. “Duhh! She must have. She appears out of nowhere right before we time travel, and she shows up when we get here. Then she, like, takes off and leaves us here. I think she’s evil: She told us not to worry about Brandon, and now he’s dead...”

  “We don’t know that,” protested Alex. “There wasn’t a body, and the case might not have been his.”

  Hannah ignored him. “Of course, that’s if Brandon ever existed. She probably made him up, too.”

  “You’re crazy,” Alex said. “Anyway, okay, if you’re right, and she brought us here somehow, that means that she can get us home again. I don’t think she’s trying to hurt us. I think she’s nice. I think we should trust her.”

  “Wha…?” Hannah was incredulous, and the peas rattled into the basin like machine-gun fire. “And do what?”

  “Like try to find George Braithwaite, which I guess means finding Brandon. But it might not.” He looked at Hannah steadily. “I don’t care what you say, I think Brandon is real, and I don’t think he’s dead.”

  “Why?” said Hannah, as she shredded an empty pea pod.

  “Like I said, there was no body, was there? Maybe he dropped all his stuff so he didn’t have to carry it, or so people couldn’t tell he was a runaway. Maybe he’s on his way back here right now. We should get on the Web and start searching blogs. Everybody we’ve seen in England is white, so somebody would notice a black kid.”

  Hannah laughed at him. “Web? Blogs? Hello? Uh, computers not invented yet?”

  Alex slapped his forehead. “Oh, wow. Right.” He thought for a second, and said, “Then we do research on foot, I guess. We’re gonna have to ask around.”

  “That’s if we can get any of these people to take us seriously,” grumbled Hannah. “Anyway, come help me with the veggies, Alex.”

  “No,” he said, with a mischievous grin, “I’ll bet it’s not a boys’ job in 1940. I reckon girls have special pea-pod shelling genes.”

  Just then, Mrs. Archer came in, pulling on her gloves.

  “Alex, please help Hannah. We all have to do our bit for the war, don’t we, even if it means doing things we’re not used to doing.”

  Hannah quietly sang “Na-na-na-na-na-naa” so that only Alex could hear.

  Mrs. Archer continued, “I shall be starting work in the office at the parachute factory tomorrow. I haven’t worked in a long, long time, but we all have to do our bit for the war, don’t we? And I think we had better arrange to put you two to our local school.”

  “What about our friend?”

  “Your what…? Oh, dear, I am sorry, Alexander, but I’m simply too busy to worry about that. I don’t mean to sound unkind, but there’s nothing we can do, really, is there? And he’s probably alright. Hurry along and get your coats on, now.”

  “So much for that idea,” muttered Hannah to Alex, as Mrs. Archer bustled from the room.

  “Never mind,” Alex said confidently, “We can figure out a way. But we are gonna need to find another grownup to help us.”

  Brandon woke up in 1915 to a smell that was like a combination of cough drops and the powerful bleach his mom used to clean the bathroom. Feeling the soft rustle of a bedsheet beneath him, he opened his eyes, and found that he was indeed in bed, and that he was looking up at a very high ceiling. Turning his head, he saw another bed next to his. Looking in the opposite direction, he saw yet another on the other side, and another after that. In fact the whole room seemed filled with row after row of identical iron beds with white sheets and grey blankets, each holding a patient. He was in a hospital.

  Nurses bustled between the rows. In their white dresses and headdresses, they looked, he thought, more like old-fashioned nuns than modern hospital nurses in their colorful scrubs and sneakers.


  A young blonde nurse suddenly appeared at the end of his bed.

  “Awake, are we?” she said brightly. “Jolly good. I’m sure Sister will be pleased.”

  As Brandon tried to process what she had said, the harried young nurse began to tuck him in even more firmly. He felt as though he was being bundled into a sweaty cocoon. “Hey, please don’t do that, ma’am,” he protested. “I’m too warm as it is. I want to sit on top of the sheets, if that’s okay.”

  “It most certainly is not alright,” she said indignantly, as she carried on tucking the bed ever tighter. “Sister would have my ears for breakfast…and yours. Now you be a good boy and try to get more sleep. You’ve had a nasty shock.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She looked impatiently to the next bed. “Concussion, if you know what that means. We think you must have been standing too close when one of those frightful Zeppelins dropped a bomb by the Strand. You had a lucky escape, young man. Now, hush. Sister will be here shortly. And she has an important visitor for us. Won’t that be a treat?”

  “I guess,” said Brandon uncertainly.

  As the arrival of Sister drew near, nurses rushed about, straightening beds, administering medicines, and clearing tables. Brandon had no idea who Sister was, but she had to be someone pretty scary to throw all these women into a panic. She turned out to be a small but stiff and imposing figure in a long dark headdress. Sister was accompanied by another older woman who wore a long blue dress, an enormous hat, a fur around her neck, and was carrying a large purse. This lady, Brandon guessed, was the special guest.